Some Small Magic by Billy Coffey ~ Book Tour and Review

Publisher's Description:
All Abel wants is a little bit of magic in his life. Enough money so his mom doesn’t cry at night. Healing for his broken body. And maybe a few answers about his past. When Abel discovers letters to him from the father he believed dead, he wonders if magic has come to the hills of Mattingly, Virginia, after all. But not everything is as it seems. With a lot of questions and a little bit of hope, Abel decides to run away to find the truth. But danger follows him from the moment he jumps his first boxcar, forcing Abel to rely on his simpleminded friend Willie—a man wanted for murder who knows more about truth than most—and a beautiful young woman they met on the train. From Appalachia to the Tennessee wilds and through the Carolina mountains, the name of a single small town beckons: Fairhope. That is where Abel believes his magic lays. But will it be the sort that will bring a broken boy healing? And is it the magic that will one day lead him home?

My Thoughts:
Have you ever read a book where you just didn't know how you felt about it or what to say about it?  Well, turns out this is one of those reads for me.  Parts I really liked and others not so much.  The description sounded interesting, a bit out of the genres I usually tend to gravitate towards .

After reading it, I would have to say I don't know if I would list this as Christian fiction.   It has as a smidge of faith element to it but I would  not call it a biblical based story.  If I had approached it this way, rather than expecting more of a faith based read because of who published it, I think I might have enjoyed it a touch better.  But I kept waiting for more of a biblical foundation to come through, at least a conclusion that would wrap it up or bring it to biblical truth.

I found there were parts that captured me, where I couldn't put it down and then other parts that tended to the tedious side and I found myself skimming the pages.  The friendship struck between Abel who was a young boy born to poverty, raised by a single parent and living each day with a disease that caused his bones to break very easily and the young adult who was mentally disabled was beautiful.  How they supported each other was heartwarming and inspiring as goals of friendship. I had to really push past the name given to this character however,  as I found it offensive to this day and age and my own sensibilities.  The character was a simple-minded man because of events that occurred when he was small and he was called Dumb Willie by those who knew him.  For the setting, I understood this and got that the attitude towards him was being established, but then to keep on referring to him as such through the whole story, even by his best friend, was really hard for me to get past, especially with my own experience working  with mentally impaired children.  The portrayal of brokenness and the different ways brokenness manifests in people's lives was also really well written.  But the comparisons, or maybe the right word is references,  of faith, miracles and magic and the whole premise of the story just didn't sit quite right with me.    This made the telling of the story just a bit too long for me but that could be because with this type of story, rather than relaxing and enjoying it I feel like I always have my discerning feelers up and working.  Was it a bad story?  No,  not if I was expecting just a fantasy or magical kind of story.  But because I was expecting  something more based on a biblical foundation it didn't connect with me and was just not my cup of tea.  I can see it being turned into a movie though.


Thanks to BookLook Bloggers and Thomas Nelson for providing a copy free of charge for my honest review.  I was not required to give a positive review.

Linked to Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books